


Red is your fate

by crackinthecup



Series: Ends and Beginnings [4]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Cannibalism, Character Study, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Death, Gore, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Medical Experimentation, POV Second Person, and as they're not the same species it's not cannibalism per se, but for the sake of tagging i think i'll stick with cannibalism, technically this is about melkor eating elves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:22:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26855146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crackinthecup/pseuds/crackinthecup
Summary: Melkor had spotted you. His eyes locked with yours. The light of them struck you, blue and piercing and hurting. You could not look away.Deep in the bowels of Utumno, there is a chamber that Melkor uses for his experiments: breaking apart the bodies of countless Elves just to see what they are made of.It is in this chamber that Mairon finds himself in the midst of something unexpected.
Relationships: Morgoth Bauglir | Melkor/Sauron | Mairon
Series: Ends and Beginnings [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2112774
Comments: 2
Kudos: 34





	Red is your fate

**Author's Note:**

> 1) What happened here is that I’ve been re-watching Hannibal and my brain went "ohhh you know what would be cool? making Melkor a cannibal!" (well, sort of a cannibal, as technically he's not the same species as the Elves, but still) So yeah, a bit of a weird fic, but hope you enjoy nonetheless!
> 
> 2) Title taken from the song Red by Carlie de Boer.

You saw Melkor eating a heart one day.

You went to fetch him—this was still early days, the boundaries between lord and lieutenant clearly defined, and you needed his approval to start testing a new carbon compound for the smelting of iron. He was in his private working space in the bowels of Utumno: a large, oval chamber carved out of the roots of the mountains. Stalactites plunged down from unseen heights above as though the rock itself had turned predatory and grown teeth. They were not normal rock formations, no—the rock seemed to burn, glowing white with magicked fire that illuminated the contents of the room.

You saw shelves upon shelves bearing jars filled with organic-looking things that you had no name for; blades and pliers and strange instruments that gleamed silver and wicked; and books—so many books, spilling their pages across the shelves and the floor, handwritten in Melkor’s own spidery scrawl. You saw diagrams of bodies on those haemorrhaging pages, bodies that were open and intricately labelled, or stitched back together in new and monstrous ways.

There were tables too, and benches, made of wood and metal and stone, inset with heavy cuffs for the wrists and ankles, and for the neck and waist too in some cases. And, deeper still into the chamber, where the light was dimmest, you could see piles standing there like misshapen barrows. You could not make out what was in those piles. You could hazard a guess.

Melkor was stood before a table. There was an Elf shackled to it—dead, but only recently so. Its chest was a wound: ribs leering out of a sea of gore, flesh peeled back and viscera left exposed, soft and cooling as the warmth of life drained from the body. Blood was dripping to the floor— _drip drip drip_ , slow, getting slower.

There was red on Melkor’s hands. No hint of his skin underneath, just that vivid, bleeding red. Within his fingers was clasped the Elf’s heart. You had never seen a heart up close before. The intricate biology of it made your skin crawl: the meat of it, dark crimson shot through with white, the tangle of veins and arteries topping it like a charnel crown.

Melkor had spotted you. His eyes locked with yours. The light of them struck you, blue and piercing and hurting. You could not look away: not when he brought the heart up to his lips, not when he dragged his tongue over the surface of it, not even when he bit into it with teeth sharper than they were a moment before. Blood spurted over his chin; he chewed and the wet sound of it echoed throughout the chamber, and still you watched, and felt the heat rise in your cheeks.

You knew the taste of his pleasure, the feel of his skin against yours, but this—this was _intimate_.

He swallowed. His eyes glowed brighter still.

“To eat is to possess,” he told you, and with a smile like a benediction he extended the hand holding the heart towards you.

You did not move any closer to him.

“It is not my place, my lord,” you said, the words rising up from the core of you before you could fully consider what Melkor was offering you. Your chest tightened as you stood there in the silence that followed, looking upon Melkor and the corpse like an intruder to some sacred ritual.

You stood up straighter, clasping your hands behind your back, finding comfort in military discipline.

Surprisingly, Melkor did not press the matter. He let his hand drop down to his side. The heart dripped its blood onto the floor. You caught yourself wondering who would clean it up.

“No, I suppose it is not your place,” Melkor said slowly, and he smiled again. “Not yet, but it will be soon.”

There was such certainty in his smile that you shivered. If someone had sat you down under the blessed light of Almaren and told you that your life would lead you here, sworn to the dark Vala and watching him defile the corpse of one of the Firstborn, you would have thought them mad.

You, a betrayer? A witness to the slaughter of dozens, to rape and torture and experiments that chilled the blood in your veins? A quest for knowledge, Melkor called it, but in your private thoughts you gave it another name. If it was knowledge that Melkor sought and nothing more, he would not take such cruel delight in the breaking of these new beings.

You let out a sigh. It did not matter much, you supposed. This was progress. It would pave the way for greater things.

Melkor beckoned to you with his other hand, the one that did not hold the heart, and this time you went to him.

“You are not here to observe or participate,” he began, placing the bloodied heart back into the Elf’s ruined chest, carefully, as though it still mattered whether it was in its anatomically correct spot. “Tell me, then: why have you come?”

You opened your mouth and you told him, dutifully, of your own experiments in the forges. These days, matters of metal and chemistry and the formulaic nature of smithcraft did not hold his attention for long. But he listened to you with uncharacteristic patience, the kind of patience he reserved for you and you alone. And as he listened, hand still thrust into the wound that was the Elf’s chest, you thought he looked a little proud.

You hoped it was because of you.


End file.
